OSNews

viton,

"You're asking too much from education system. If you want to learn something, nobody can stop you (except religion issues). At 16 a lot of my friends were fluent asm coders."

I was too, but times are changing. I think there's a lot schools could do to improve education, but most districts here are suffering from spending cuts that have occurred throughout this decade.

Then there's the spread of personal computers like ipads which cannot be programmed directly like the computers they're replacing. Many families still have access to unrestricted computers, but I worry that alot fewer will have access to them in the future going by today's trends.

I hope strict Apple/WinRT policies will be softened one day. But on Android there are no restrictions like this.
The natural "restriction" of coding on touch screen-based devices is the usability of current development environments. Keyboard/Mouse requirement is a rather poor solution. There are interesting concepts like "Lisping" nevertheless.



The problem actually is only with native apps.
Right now web-apps development is possible even on iPad, and it will play a significant role in future.
If only WebGL worked on it... (Without JB)
Now you can write almost anything in javascript - like web-"operating system", WebGL game/demo, retro console emulator, graphics editor, etc
Even if you want to feel really "old-skool", there is something for you: http://bellard.org/jslinux/

There are some online IDEs like http://coderun.com/ide or http://cloud-ide.com

The same could be done for native apps, where you can write with any device you have, build and test your app on several target devices at once with realtime video-feedback, then submit final build directly to your dev account. But I expect Apple's "SchutzStaffel" will tear such a service apart :-)

Edited 2012-10-28 22:43 UTC

How is it too much to ask the education system to educate people?

Of course, the bigger issue is that the school system makes everything boring. If people are discouraged (as I was) then there's no inclination to "open a book" to learn more. Nor does it help that the education system doesn't even point people in the right direction. It doesn't matter if a subset of linear algebra can be learned in a day, if you don't know that that's what you need to know.

You can't teach people everything they need to know.
I don't know western education system but IMO the point of education is to show _how to think_ + some baseline knowledge.


Who defines the "right" direction for every given individual?


This is a really lame excuse. Now almost any information is a couple of clicks away.